Gillian

17

My mother used to tell me
To hold my breath when we crossed a bridge
That otherwise
I’d breath in all the bad luck in the world
As trolls and demons
And monsters clad in scales
Liked to live under bridges
I would close my eyes
And keep that breath in my lungs
Pure
Untainted
I’m older now
And I still find myself
Holding my breath

My life has a reset button
Set to go off every three years
It’s a bomb that obliterates
Eradicates
Everything it touches
Everything it can find
No matter how safely it’s tucked away
In cardboard boxes
And bubble wrap
It always manages to shatter

Some kids’ summers
Are filled with water fights
And ice cream
Mine is lacerated
With greasy drive throughs
Hotel rooms
And a split up family

my parents have been happily married
All my life
And to this day
Remain together
But my mother plays the part
Of the recent divorce
The single mom
Moving her three girls
From Texas to Ohio
From Ohio to Germany
Because my father
Every six months
leaves in his uniform
For some far off place
Weather it be training
or deployment
He fights a war
And cannot whisper a word
about and sends us chocolates melted in their wrappers

My summers are very much
Like crossing a bridge at times
It’s a season where I don’t breath
In hopes
That I do not topple the house of cards
That my home has become
So that I don’t fall into that pit
That sits gaping just behind me
Waiting for me to step back in fear
Summer is time of moving
Of leaving
It’s PCS season right
Everyone might as well
mark their calanders

you ask me where I’m from
I might as well reply
Homeless
I have no home town
I think I’ve spent more hours sleeping
In minivans
Between hotel sheets
And in cramped, military housing
Drowning in starch
Than my own bed
in a roome where I can recodnize
The celing

But don’t breath just yet
Don’t open your mouth to gasp
Or it’ll all come tumbling down
Once again

Because it’s still summer
you’re still crossing that bridge
The one that spans between one house
And one home
Oh the places I have seen
You would not imagine
I have had pizza in Paris
And warmed my hands
over fires in prague
I danced in Turkey
And lost a ski in the Alps

But there are repercussions
And heart concussions
That leave you dizzy for months
I cannot count
How many friends I have lost
In the tide that is leaving
How many teenage romances
I’ve had to cut short
Because short is better than some
Long distance disaster

And then
you at last take in that
Breath of fresh air
the bridge ending on solid ground
School starts and the season is over
That’s when I can look up
And take my hands from my ringing ears
the explosions have finished
The time bomb is being wound
But my home is rubble

And I am one of the things left behind
To be packed away
To be moved next summer
My forehead tattooed with a warning to all
The mark of cain in spray paint red
FRAGILE